Three Cheers For Four Years, Instagram! - Vol. 1, num. 1
Joan Jett's Bad Reputation // 80s Winona Ryder // 90s Stare Trek The Next Generation // Thrifting Adventure // This Week In The 80s & 90s
First off, let’s start with Joan Jett not giving a damn about her bad reputation…
Did you know Jett got her first guitar at the age of 13? She took some guitar lessons, but soon quit because the instructor kept trying to teach her folk songs. Her family then moved to West Covina, California, in Los Angeles County, providing Jett with the opportunity to pursue her musical interests.
Ok, so now that we got that out of the way, let’s see what’s going on in…
…The 80s «
Here are my favorite photos this week —





Ok, so that first photo of Winona Ryder is hilarious… What’s your favorite Winona Ryder film? It’s Beetlejuice for me, but she’s so great in Heathers too!
…The 90s «
Remember this crew?

I loved Star Trek: The Next Generation! I really miss the show tbh and I’ve had trouble getting into any new Trek shows over the years. I tried getting into Enterprise with Scott Bakula, but I sort of faded out of it in the late episodes of Season 1. I can’t say that I won’t go back to it, but damn, TNG just can’t be beat! Did you watch the series?
Speaking of Scott Bakula — Did you watch the first season of the new Quantum Leap? What were your thoughts? I think I made it through a couple of episodes only and quit on the show. Not on purpose, but my schedule got in the way. I might return to it soon, but I’m curious what your thoughts are on the show. I loved the original Quantum Leap, never missed it. I wish there was a way to remake the show with the same actors, touched up storylines, all with the advanced CGI capabilities of today.
Before we dig into some deeper stuff, here’s an audience poll…
Three Cheers for Four Years, Instagram!
Two things happened this last week — I rewatched Jerry Maguire (My wife had never seen it!) and I started planning my four year anniversary post for Instagram. Is there such a thing as a mid-life crisis on social media? Lol, ok, so let me clarify that a little. I’ve been having a Jerry Maguire moment for a while.
Breakdown? No, Breakthrough.
~ Jerry Maguire
This entire year I’ve been trying to get my projects aligned and my social media buttoned up so I have more cohesion across platforms. Additionally, I’ve been desiring to be far more connected with my audience. During the first couple of years of Instagram I made a lot of effort to host live sessions and really try to learn who all the players were in my niche, and also get to know them. As time went on, Reels came along and along with it Instagram’s Big Brother algorithm. Ask any creator and they will tell you they’ve been humbled at one time or another by this pesky program. Sure, the average Instagrammer follows over a thousand accounts, so even if there were no algorithm it’s understandable that most of one’s audience may not see a post. But that’s really the least of all issues when I mention connecting more deeply with my audience. One of the biggest challenges with social media in general is that it’s cultivated short viewing cycles. Couple that with the Eye-of-Sauron algorithm that throttles any post that tags other profiles along with layers and layers of micro processes that can impact an account over several days (sort of like bite-size punishment for not promoting the post), well, you can see that although Instagram has so many great features, even the king of social platforms is not necessarily relationship friendly. Nearly all social media platforms are like moody micro managers.
So the bottom line is I felt like something has been missing for a while in trying to build my own loyal community. And that’s the key, right? As content creators we want the people that enjoy our commonality to see and enjoy what we create, without filters. And by having that ability, we can build stronger relationships, thus, building tighter communities.
As a result I started to do something I’m notorious for doing… asking myself why I’m doing something. By the way, if you’ve started doing that, don’t fret, it’s just your creative self checking in and doing a self diagnostic.
I’ve been so fortunate that in four years I’ve attracted and built wonderful communities on multiple platforms, but I believe it was last year when I was thinking I was going to focus on growing TikTok more, that self diagnostic was triggered.
I thought about this a lot, and after some time I had to accept the fact that no matter how hard I tried and no matter how creative I am, the audience I was growing was not mine - the audience belongs to the social app, and they know it, so they don’t care if I have a half million followers and they show the post I spent two hours on between 8-12% of my followers.
So I decided to start this newsletter. But I didn’t want to make it a traditional newsletter in the marketing sense. In this newsletter I was going to let it out there, take my time and share behind the scenes stuff, my thoughts, sort of like what you’re reading right now, and some personal stuff too. I felt better. I’m not kidding.
I know it’s not easy to grow a newsletter. I know how crazy most people’s inboxes look. Mine is terrible, lol — but — I love to write and I care about people willing to spend 5-10 minutes reading something that brings them joy. I asked myself, would I subscribe to a newsletter about nostalgia from a 40-something-year-old guy that posts throwbacks on Instagram and creates YouTube videos about movies, physical media, and whose favorite films include Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, and The Goonies?
I truly would!
So I’ve made a commitment that I am going to create for an audience very much like me — The ones that still read. The ones that are hungry for history and appreciate shared experiences from our childhood. The ones willing to look for an email from a dude living in San Diego that still listens to cassette tapes and has a penchant for remembering specific details about random things from the past.
And hey, hopefully over the next few years my personal email list will rival that of the confusion that is social media apps. I still care and appreciate that passersby on the app, but I’m going to really water this garden in my newsletter and cultivate it to be my own. I just hope I’m better at tending this garden then the small plants we buy for the house that die in a few weeks! 🤣
Things I enjoyed this week
Butterfly in the Sky: The Story of Reading Rainbow — I absolutely loved this documentary about Reading Rainbow!! It was at select theatres a short time ago but it’s streaming on Netflix now. It’s a must-see for any GenX/Millennial kid. LeVar Burton is a national treasure!! Oh, and you can check out the official Reading Rainbow page HERE … and LeVar’s page HERE!
Something that really made me happy this week was making time to hang out with one of my long-time best friends. We met up and did some thrifting together. He showed me around his stomping grounds in Chula Vista, CA and along the way I stumbled on an original Goonies poster someone had donated! My buddy saw how excited I was so he bought it for me!! Always make time for your friends! Here are a few more images from the adventure.

I found this Jumanji game but the box was really damaged in the back, and for whatever reason thrift shops use packing tape to seal the games and it ruins the box itself. I really wanted to buy this but someone had tried to remove the tape to look inside and tore a large chunk from the side, so I passed :(
Here I am relaxing in this cool chair for a minute (ok I was posing) in one of my favorite tees from my friends at RetroKid (use 80sDude15) for a discount on your purchase!

Other Things that happened THIS WEEK IN THE 80s and 90s…
The Final Episode of Mork & Mindy - The show ran 4 Seasons with 91 Episodes
The Final Episode of Punky Brewster Aired - The show ran 4 Seasons with 88 Episodes
Happy Birthday Todd Bridges - 59 Years Old
1990-Hubble telescope sends its first photographs from space!
1992-Jay Leno becomes permanent host of The Tonight Show
Signing off…
Alright friends, thanks for reading this first issue of my newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it. Please feel free to send me a message and let me know how you enjoyed it and if you have any constructive feedback. If I can ask you for anything, please share this newsletter with a friend by clicking the button below, and help me spread the nostalgia cheer around.
See you in the next post. Stay rad!
~ John (That 80s Dude)